Turning the Bay Bridge into San Francisco’s High Line

You might recall a few month back when there was all that to do in San Francisco over an accident that happened during construction on the Bay Bridge. It quickly settled down (at least out here away from the west coast) and the project started back up again in rebuilding the aged bridge. The current plan is just to knock down the old structure once the new one is built, but students and professors at UC Berkeley‘s College of Environmental Design have started asking if there’s an alternative to demolition. Their ideas range from turning the bridge into a working farm, to a couple of different hotel concepts, to taking a page from New York by creating a High Line-esque park. Unfortunately, the plans are largely just ideas at this point, as they likely won’t gain too much traction with a city government already plagued by delays and troublesome missteps. Not to mention that it’s also not the safest thing around anymore:

“Changing the use of that structure does not change the fact that in the long run, it’s (seismically) obsolete,” Ney said. “We would not be allowed to leave something in ruin on the bay. The level of maintenance required even then would be enormous.”